Some of the earliest photographs taken in Aotearoa are on show in a new touring exhibition.
In A Different Light is showing at Auckland War Memorial Museum, from where the photographs were drawn along with the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington and the Hocken Library in Dunedin.
Otago University history professor Angela Wanhalla of Ngāi Tahu, who contributed to the accompanying book, says photography was invented in 1839, and it was widely in use in the colony by the end of the 1840s, so many valuable images of tupuna were captured.
It could also be seen as a tool of colonisation.
“It’s there bearing witness to how the landscape changes for instance. It’s also there as part of the story of New Zealand Wars as well and is used by the state for its own purposes, so it’s not an innocent tool of documenting and witnessing change but also sometimes participating in that as well,” Wanhalla says.
- Waatea News